G4S to run police station

Security firm G4S has been given a contract to design, build and run a police station.

Lincolnshire Police agreed the deal in a bid to save £20 million in what is thought to be the largest move of its kind in Britain.

The 540 civilian workers at the force — two-thirds — will be transferred to the private company in April.

The £200 million deal over ten years will see G4S run IT, human resources and finance.

G4S is the biggest global security company in the world with a £1 billion turnover in the UK, showing its interests clearly lie in big business and profit, not acting to protect the vulnerable.

The Police Federation condemned the move saying private sector workers may not have an “enshrined sense of public duty”.

Socialists should also condemn the move, but for our own reasons. We mistrust the police as part of the iron fist of the bourgeois state. Nonetheless, government institutions while they remain in the hands of the state, can be, potentially, held to greater account. We oppose privately-run police stations just as we oppose privately-run prisons, even though we are opposed to the existence of prisons and the police force on principle.

Ultimately we want to see the abolition of the police, but in the meantime we should fight for greater accountability over the police and other state machinery, and the full unionisation of civilian workers.